Along Came a Spider

Along Came a Spider

BY James Patterson

A family of three brutally murdered in the projects of Washington, D.C.

The thrill-killing of a beautiful elementary school teacher.

A psychopathic serial kidnapper/murderer who calls himself the Son of Lindbergh. He is so terrifying that the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police cannot outsmart him — even after he's been captured.

Gary Soneji is a mild-mannered mathematics teacher at a Washington, D.C., private school for the children of the political and social elite. He's so popular that the kids all call him "Mr. Chips." And he's very, very smart. Growing up, he always knew he was smarter than the rest of them — he knew that the Great Ones always fooled everybody. He kidnaps Maggie Rose, the golden-haired daughter of a famous movie actress, and her best friend, Shrimpie Goldberg, the son of the secretary of the treasury, right out from under the noses of their two Secret Service agents. But Gary Soneji is not surprised at his skill. He's done it before. Hundreds of times before.

Alex Cross is a homicide detective with a Ph.D. in psychology. he looks like Muhammad Ali in his prime. Cross works and lives in the ghettos of D.C. He's a tough guy from a tough part of town who wears Harris Tweed jackets and likes to relax by banging out Gershwin tunes on his baby grand piano. He has two adorable kids of his own. They are his own special vulnerabilities.

Jezzie Flanaganis the first woman ever to hold the highly sensitive job as supervisor of the Secret Service in Washington. Blond, mysterious, seductive, she's got an outer shell that's as tough s it is beautiful. She rides her black BMW motorcycle at speeds of no less than 100 mph. What is she running from? What is her secret?

Alex Cross and Jezzie Flanagan are about to have a forbidden love affair-at the worst possible time for both of them. Because Gary Soneji, who wants to commit the "crime of the century," is playing at the top of his game. The latest of the unspeakable crimes happened in Alex Cross's precinct. They happened under the protection of Jezzie Flanagan's men. Now Soneji is at large again, still wreaking havoc.

Alex Cross must face the ultimate test as a psychologist: how do you outmaneuver a brilliant psychopath? Especially one who appears to have a split personality — one who won't let the other half remember those horrific acts?

Soneji has outsmarted the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police. Who will be his next victim?

Gary Soneji is every parent's worst nightmare. He has become Alex Cross's nightmare. And now, reader, he's about to become yours.

CHAPTER 1

EARLY ON THE MORNING of December 21, 1992, I was the picture of
contentment on the sun porch of our house on 5th Street in Washington,
D.C. The small, narrow room was cluttered with mildewing winter coats,
work boots, and wounded children's toys. I couldn't have cared less.
This was home.

I was playing Gershwin on our slightly out-of-tune, formerly grand
piano. It was just past 5 A.M., and cold as a meat locker on the porch.
I was prepared to sacrifice a little for "An American in Paris."

The phone jangled in the kitchen. Maybe I'd won the D.C., or Virginia,
or Maryland lottery and they'd forgotten to call the night before. I
play all three games of misfortune regularly.

"Nana? Can you get that?" I called from the porch.

"It's for you. You might as well get it yourself," my testy grandmother
called back. "No sense me gettin' up, too. No sense means nonsense in my
dictionary."

That's not exactly what was said, but it went something like that. It
always does.

I hobbled into the kitchen, sidestepping more toys on morning-stiff
legs. I was thirty-eight at the time. As the saying goes, if I'd known I
was going to live that long, I would have taken better care of myself.

The call turned out to be from my partner in crime, John Sampson.
Sampson knew I'd be up. Sampson knows me better than my own kids.

"Mornin', brown sugar. You up, aren't you?" he said. No other I.D. was
necessary. Sampson and I have been best friends since we were nine years
old and took up shoplifting at Park's Corner Variety store near the
projects. At the time, we had no idea that old Park would have shot us
dead over a pilfered pack of Chesterfields. Nana Mama would have done
even worse to us if she'd known about our crime spree.

"If I wasn't up, I am now," I said into the phone receiver. "Tell me
something good."

"It's too early in the morning to see the meat wagon," I muttered. I
could feel my stomach rolling. This wasn't the way I wanted the day to
start. "S--t. F--k me."

Nana Mama looked up from her steaming tea and runny eggs. She shot me
one of her sanctimonious, lady-of-the-house looks. She was already
dressed for school, where she still does volunteer work at seventy-nine.
Sampson continued to give me gory details about the day's first
homicides.

"Watch your language, Alex," Nana said. "Please watch your language so
long as you're planning to live in this house."

"I'll be there in about ten minutes," I told Sampson. "I own this
house," I said to Nana.

She groaned as if she were hearing that terrible news for the first
time.

"There's been another bad murder over in Langley Terrace. It looks like
a thrill killer. I'm afraid that it is," I told her.

"That's too bad," Nana Mama said to me. Her soft brown eyes grabbed mine
and held. Her white hair looked like one of the doilies she puts on all
our living-room chairs. "That's such a bad part of what the politicians
have let become a deplorable city. Sometimes I think we ought to move
out of Washington, Alex."

"Sometimes I think the same thing," I said, "but we'll probably tough it
out."

"Yes, black people always do. We persevere. We always suffer in
silence."

"Not always in silence," I said to her.

I had already decided to wear my old Harris Tweed jacket. It was a
murder day, and that meant I'd be seeing white people. Over the sport
coat, I put on my Georgetown warm-up jacket. It goes better with the
neighborhood.

On the bureau, by the bed, was a picture of Maria Cross. Three years
before, my wife had been murdered in a drive-by shooting. That murder,
like the majority of murders in Southeast, had never been solved.

I kissed my grandmother on the way out the kitchen door. We've done that
since I was eight years old. We also say good-bye, just in case we never
see each other again. It's been like that for almost thirty years, ever
since Nana Mama first took me in and decided she could make something of
me.

She made a homicide detective, with a doctorate in psychology, who works
and lives in the ghettos of Washington, D.C.

I AM OFFICIALLY a Deputy Chief of Detectives, which, in the words of
Shakespeare and Mr. Faulkner, is a lot of sound and fury, signifying
nada. The title should make me the number six or seven person in the
Washington Police Department. It doesn't. People wait for my appearance
at crime scenes in D.C., though.

A trio of D.C. Metro blue-and-whites were parked helter-skelter in front
of 41-15 Benning Road. A crime-lab van with blackened windows had
arrived. So had an EMS ambulance. MORTUARY was cheerfully stenciled on
the door.

There were a couple of fire engines at the murder house. The
neighborhood's ambulance-chasers, mostly eye-f--king males, were hanging
around. Older women with winter coats thrown over their pajamas and
nightgowns, and pink and blue curlers in their hair, were up on their
porches shivering in the cold.

The row house was dilapidated clapboard, painted a gaudy Caribbean blue.
An old Chevette with a broken, taped-up side window looked as if it had
been abandoned in the driveway.

"F--k this. Let's go back to bed," Sampson said. "I just remembered what
this is going to be like. I hate this job lately."

"I love my work, love Homicide," I said with a sneer. "See that? There's
the M.E. already in his plastic suit. And there are the crime lab boys.
And who's this coming our way now?"

A white sergeant in a puffy blue-black parka with a fur collar came
waddling up to Sampson and me as we approached the house. Both his hands
were jammed in his pockets for warmth.

"Sampson? Uh, Detective Cross?" The sergeant cracked his lower jaw the
way some people do when they're trying to clear their ears in airplanes.
He knew exactly who we were. He knew we were S.I.T. He was busting our
chops.

"F--k you," said the sergeant. It was nice to meet the white Eddie
Murphy.

"Master of the riposte." Sampson grinned at me. "You hear what he said?
F--k you?"

Sampson and I are both physical. We work out at the gym attached to St.
Anthony's--St. A's. Together, we weigh about five hundred pounds. We can
intimidate, if we want to. Sometimes it's necessary in our line of work.

I'm only six three. John is six nine and growing. He always wears
Wayfarer sunglasses. Sometimes he wears a raggy Kangol hat, or a yellow
bandanna. Some people call him "John-John" because he's so big he could
be two Johns.

We walked past the sergeant toward the murder house. Our elite task
force team is supposed to be above this kind of confrontation. Sometimes
we are.

A couple of uniforms had already been inside the house. A nervous
neighbor had called the precinct around four-thirty. She thought she'd
spotted a prowler. The woman had been up with the night hitters. It
comes with the neighborhood.

The two uniformed patrolmen found three bodies inside. When they called
it in, they were instructed to wait for the Special Investigator Team.
S.I.T. It's made up of eight black officers supposedly slated for better
things in the department.

The outside door to the kitchen was ajar. I pushed it all the way open.
The doors of every house have a unique sound when they open and close.
This one whined like an old man.

It was pitch-black in the house. Eerie. The wind was sucked through the
open door, and I could hear something rattling inside.

"We didn't turn on the lights, sir," one of the uniforms said from
behind me. "You're Dr. Cross, right?"

I nodded. "Was the kitchen door open when you came?" I turned to the
patrolman. He was white, baby-faced, growing a little mustache to
compensate for it. He was probably twenty-three or twenty-four, real
frightened that morning. I couldn't blame him.

"Uh. No. No sign of forced entry. It was unlocked, sir."

The patrolman was very nervous. "It's a real bad mess in there, sir.
It's a family."

One of the patrolmen switched on a powerful milled-aluminum flashlight
and we all peered inside the kitchen.

There was a cheap Formica breakfast table with matching lime green vinyl
chairs. A black Bart Simpson clock was on one wall. It was the kind you
see in the front windows of all the People's drugstores. The smells of
Lysol and burnt grease melded into something strange to the nose, though
not entirely unpleasant. There were a lot worse smells in homicide
cases.

Sampson and I hesitated, taking it all in the way the murderer might
have just a few hours earlier.

"He was right here," I said. "He came in through the kitchen. He was
here, where we're standing."

No matter how many times you do this kind of thing, it never gets
easier. You don't want to have to go inside. You don't want to see any
more horrible nightmares in your lifetime.

"They're upstairs," the cop with the mustache said. He filled us in on
who the victims were. A family named Sanders. Two women and a small boy.

His partner, a short, well-built black man, hadn't said a word yet. His
name was Butchie Dykes. He was a sensitive young cop I'd seen around the
station.

The four of us entered the death house together. We each took a deep
breath. Sampson patted my shoulder. He knew that child homicide had me
shook.

The three bodies were upstairs in the front bedroom, just off the top of
the stairs.

There was the mother, Jean "Poo" Sanders, thirty-two. Even in death, her
face was haunting. She had big brown eyes, high cheekbones, full lips
that had already turned purplish. Her mouth was stretched open in a
scream.

Poo's daughter, Suzette Sanders, fourteen years on this earth. She was
just a young girl but had been prettier than her mother. She wore a
mauve ribbon in her braided hair and a tiny nose earring to prove she
was older than her years. Suzette was gagged with dark blue panty hose.

A baby son, Mustaf Sanders, three years old, was lying face up, and his
little cheeks seemed stained with tears. He was wearing a "pajama bag"
like my own kids wear.

Just as Nana Mama had said, it was a bad part of what somebody had let
become a bad city. In this big bad country of ours. The mother and the
daughter were bound to an imitation brass bedpost. Satin underwear,
black and red mesh stockings, and flowery bed sheets had been used to
tie them up.

I took out the pocket recorder I carry and began to put down my first
observations. "Homicide cases H234 914 through 916. A mother, teenage
daughter, little boy. The women have been slashed with something
extremely sharp. A straight razor, possibly.

"Their breasts have been cut off. The breasts are nowhere to be found.
The pubic hair of the women has been shaved. There are multiple stab
wounds, what the pathologists call 'patterns of rage.' There is a great
deal of blood, fecal matter. I believe the two women, both the mother
and daughter, were prostitutes. I've seen them around."

My voice was a low drone. I wondered if I'd be able to understand all
the words later.

"The little boy's body seems to have been casually tossed aside. Mustaf
Sanders has on hand-me-down pajamas that are covered with Care Bears. He
is a tiny, incidental pile in the room." I couldn't help grieving as I
looked down at the little boy, his sad, lifeless eyes staring up at me.
Everything was very noisy inside my head. My heart ached. Poor little
Mustaf, whoever you were.

"I don't believe he wanted to kill the boy," I said to Sampson. "He or
she."

"Or it." Sampson shook his head. "I vote for it. It's a Thing, Alex. The
same Thing that did Condon Terrace earlier this week."